Wireless communications comprises a well-understood area of endeavor. Generally speaking, wireless communications permit information to be provided from one location to another, electronically, without a physically-visible path such as a metal wire, optical fiber, or the like. Known areas of practice include repeater-based systems, the sharing of a limited bandwidth amongst a relatively large user base, frequency-hopping systems, and more. These known approaches, in turn, often serve well in a variety of application settings.
These known approaches, however, do not necessarily satisfactorily meet the needs and requirements of all application settings, however. A modern self-storage facility constitutes one such example in these regards. Such facilities are increasingly designed to require few, if any, human attendants. This leads to increasing reliance upon automated and/or remotely controllable access-control mechanisms, lighting, security mechanisms, safety mechanisms, and so forth. At the same time, however, fixed and operating costs must typically meet stringent requirements that are anything but generous. This tends to prompt the use of wireless links to support such an infrastructure to thereby avoid the need to install and maintain a complicated hard-wired data network to support the hundreds or even thousands of devices that represent the communicative edges of such a network. (These network devices at the outer edge of the network's communication links are referred to herein as “edge devices.”)
Using wireless edge devices can avoid the need for a hard-wired data network, but such devices obviously need electrical power and the similar wish to avoid an expensive hard-wired power-distribution backbone can urge the designer towards battery-powered devices. Here, however, a serious conundrum presents itself. If the battery life for the hundreds or thousands of edge devices at a self-service storage facility is too brief, the corresponding need to frequently service those devices to exchange batteries can defeat hoped-for gains. But if the edge devices are unable to wirelessly communicate properly due to a wish to avoid drawing down those batteries too quickly, their underlying functionality and raison d'être can be undercut to the point of rendering the system unfit for its intended purpose.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.